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Resignation of Lucid Motors' veteran CEO spooks investor fear of new product delays

Resignation of Lucid Motors' veteran CEO spooks investor fear of new product delays

Yahoo28-02-2025
Peter Rawlinson, the former Model S chief engineer, left his post as CEO and CTO following the launch of Lucid Motors' Gravity SUV. Bank of America downgraded the stock and slashed its price target by two-thirds as a result.
Investors dumped shares in Lucid Motors overboard after Peter Rawlinson stepped down as CEO following nearly six years at the helm, the second major C-suite reshuffling in four weeks.
On Tuesday, the Saudi-backed electric vehicle manufacturer informed investors Rawlinson, the former chief engineer for the Tesla Model S, had resigned from both his corner office job as well as his responsibility serving as chief technology officer, a position he held since 2013.
'Now that we have successfully launched the Lucid Gravity, I have decided it is finally the right time for me to step aside from my roles including CEO, CTO, and as a member of the board of directors at Lucid,' he wrote in a resignation letter included in a regulatory filing.
Standing in for Rawlinson on an interim basis, until a replacement can be found, will be operations chief Marc Winterhoff. He will have the task of more than doubling output to 20,000 vehicles from last year's 9,000 as production of the new Gravity ramps up.
Lucid had just completed its search for a new chief financial officer to replace Sherry House, who left in December 2023. Late last month, the company reported it had recently appointed Taoufiq Boussaid to the position. Now they'll have to fill the chief executive job in the coming months.
The departure of Rawlinson, who will remain an advisor to the company for the next two years, comes abruptly but shouldn't be considered a surprise. The carmaker is in the process of engineering a whole new platform, which is a lengthy, complicated, and time-consuming process. Once completed, it will underpin models slotting in below the luxury Air sedan and its SUV sibling, the Gravity, which compete with the Tesla Model S and X.
With the Gravity now launched into the market, the break in Lucid's engineering cycle serves as a natural jumping-off point—especially for someone with 13 years at the company, nearly half of which as CEO.
Bank of America analyst John Murphy warned the loss of Rawlinson is 'much more consequential than understood by the market' and could lead to future product delays and lower volumes.
He downgraded Lucid to 'underperform' from 'neutral' and slashed his price target to just $1 a share from $3 previously. Lucid traded down 12% to hit $2.30, giving it a market cap of roughly $7 billion.
In his resignation letter, Rawlinson said it was only very recently that he signed off on two of the three variants of its forthcoming platform that will underpin a $50,000 midsize car to be sold globally.
'These will now progress through to their development and industrialization phases,' he told staff.
The first cars off this platform are scheduled to start production late next year. The company did, however, take the precaution to include it in its risk report, a kind of boilerplate legal disclaimer of all the things that could go wrong.
'Our midsize platform is still in the development and/or testing phase, and may occur later than expected or not at all,' Lucid said in its annual 10-K filing.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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Uber Just Made a Huge Investment in Its Robotaxi Future. Here's What Investors Need to Know.
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Uber Just Made a Huge Investment in Its Robotaxi Future. Here's What Investors Need to Know.

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Deckers jumps as international demand for UGG, Hoka drives Q1 results beat
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Could Buying Lucid Stock Today Set You Up for Life?
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Before you buy stock in Lucid Group, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Lucid Group wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $634,627!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,046,799!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,037% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 182% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025 Chris Neiger has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Could Buying Lucid Stock Today Set You Up for Life? was originally published by The Motley Fool

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